I was reading an article today called: The Dangers of Working 24/7. I started thinking about my recent blog post, Social Media Anxiety: When is it time to unplug?
The articles above all highlight an intersting downside to the recent explosion of information and communication. While it is great that I can whip out my iPhone at a moment’s notice and find out the name of the actor who played Kumar in “Harold and Kumar” (it’s Kal Penn), it is also an enormous distraction. I’ve many times found myself sitting on the couch next to my fiancee, each of us have our laptops on our laps working at 9pm. We’ve been out to dinner with couples before and all 4 of us will stop to respond to an email on our smartphones. I sometimes even pull out my phone without any purpose and I’ll just click on the first app that catches my eye. Sometimes I open a web browser and don’t even know where to go I had no plan, it’s just a reaction.
It’s funny because years ago, before this technology people had other issues to deal with and usually I feel exceptionally lucky to be a part of this progress, to be able to have my own blog and microblog. There are an increasing number of instances where I feel like all of this is more of an obligation sometimes, it becomes maddening and I’ve also recently instituted a no computer after 9pm policy…that I’ve already broken 50% of the time.
Anyone else going through this stuff? I find that reading articles like the one above really help me take a step back and disconnect from those interwebs.